Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

Melanie eased closer to the doorway, still crouching. Brutus was at the window, beside Shannon, looking out. Bear started to glance toward the room but turned back to Stoat, who was laughing at something. Bear, stroking the shotgun he held, reared back and laughed, closing his eyes.

Now. Do it.

I can't.

Do it, while he can't see you.

A deep breath. Now. Melanie slipped out of the room and crawled under a rotting walkway, indented and bowed from a million hoof-prints. She paused, looking through the cascade of tumbling water. Kielle… Where are you? You think you can stab him and just vanish? You and your damn comic books!

She slipped through the water – it was freezing cold and slimy. Shivering in disgust, she made her way into the cavernous room.

What would the girl do? Circle around, she supposed, come up behind him, stab him in the back. Past the machinery, rusting scraps of metal and rotting wood. Piles of chains and meat hooks, stained with blood and barbed with sharp bits of dried flesh. The vats were disgusting. From them emanated a sickening smell and Melanie couldn't rid her mind of the image of animals sinking down into simmering fat and fluid. She felt her gorge rising, started to retch.

No! Be quiet! The least sound'll tell them you're here.

She struggled to control herself, dropping to her knees to breathe the cool moist air from the floor.

Glancing under the legs of a large guillotine, its angular blade rusty and pitted, Melanie saw the little girl's shadow across the room as she scrambled from one column to another.

Melanie started forward quickly. And got only two feet before she felt the numbing thud of her shoulder running into a piece of steel pipe, six feet long, resting against a column. It began a slow fall to the floor.

No!

Melanie flung her arms around the pipe. It must have weighed a hundred pounds.

I can't hold it, can't stop it!

The pipe fell faster, pulling her after it. Just as her grip was about to go she dropped to the floor, rolled under the rusty metal, and took the impact of it on her tensed stomach muscles. She gasped at the pain that surged through her body, praying that the wind and the cascade of water made enough noise to cover the grunting from her throat. She lay stunned for a long moment.

Finally she managed to ease out from underneath the pipe and roll it to the floor – silently, she hoped.

Oh, Kielle, where are you? Don't you understand? You can't kill them all. They'll find us, they'll kill us. Or Bear'll take us into the back of the factory. Haven't you seen his eyes? Don't you know what he wants? No, you probably don't. You don't have a clue -

She risked a look toward the front of the room. The attention of the men was mostly turned toward the TV. Occasionally Bear glanced at the killing room but didn't seem to notice that two of the captives were missing.

Glancing again beneath the legs of the machinery, Melanie caught a glimpse of blond hair. There she was, Kielle, making her way inexorably toward the three men near the window. Crawling, a smile on her face. She probably did think she could kill all three.

Struggling to catch her breath from the blow of the pipe, Melanie scrabbled down a corridor, hid behind a rusted column. She turned the corner and saw the blond girl, only twenty or thirty feet from Brutus, whose back was to her as he continued to gaze out the window. His hand casually gripping Shannon's collar. If any one of the three men had stood and walked toward the girl, they'd only have to look down over one of the large vats, which lay on its side, to see her.

Kielle was tensing. About to leap over the vat and charge Brutus.

Melanie thought, Should I just let her do it? What is the worst that would happen? She'd get a few feet toward them, Bear would see her, take the knife away. They'd slap her once or twice, shove her back into the killing room.

Why should I risk my life? Risk Bear's hands on me? Risk Brutus's eyes?

But then Melanie saw Susan. Saw the dot appearing on her back and the puff of black hair, like smoke, rise up.

She saw Bear looking over Emily's boyish body, grinning.

Shit.

Melanie pulled her black shoes off, pushed them under a metal table. She started to sprint. Flat out, down the narrow corridor, dodging overhanging hunks of metal and rods and pipes, leaping over a piece of butcher block.

Just as Kielle stood and reached for the top of the vat Melanie tackled her. One hand around her stomach, the other around her mouth. They went down hard and knocked into the hinged lid of a vat, which slammed closed.

"No!" the little girl signed. "Let me -"

Melanie did something she'd never in her life done: drew back her open palm and aimed directly at the girl's cheek. Kielle's eyes went wide. The teacher lowered her hand and glanced through the crack between two overturned vats. Brutus had turned, looking in their direction. Stoat was shrugging. "Wind," she saw him say. Unsmiling Bear was on his feet, carrying the shotgun, walking toward them.

"Inside," Melanie signed fiercely, gesturing toward a large steel vat nearby, resting on its side. The girl hesitated for a moment and they climbed inside, pulling the lid closed, like a door. The sides were coated with a waxy substance that disgusted Melanie and made her skin crawl. The smell was overpowering and she struggled once again to keep from vomiting.

A shadow fell over the vat and she felt a vibration as Bear stepped into the corridor. He was only two feet from them.

Halfheartedly, he glanced around and then stepped back toward Shannon and the other men.

Kielle turned to her. In the dim light Melanie could just make out the girl's words. "I'm going to kill him! Don't stop me, or I'll kill you too!"

Melanie gasped as the little girl lifted the razor-sharp blade and pointed it at her. "Stop it!" Melanie signed brutally. What should I do? she wondered. Images of Susan were flashing through her mind. Mrs. Harstrawn, her father, her brother.

And De l'Epée.

Susan, help me.

De l'Epée…

Then Melanie thought suddenly: There is no Susan. She's dead. Dead and already cold.

And Mrs. Harstrawn may as well be.

De l'Epée? He's just a lie. A phony visitor to your phony little room. Another of your sick, imaginary friends, one of the dozens you grew up talking to, going out with, making very solitary love to while you hid from everything real. I get everything wrong! I hear music when there is no music, I hear nothing when people speak to me inches away, I'm afraid when I have to be brave…

The little girl reached for the lid of the vat.

"Kielle!" Melanie signed angrily. "Jubilee… All right. Listen."

The girl looked at her cautiously, nodded.

"You really want to kill him?"

"Yes!" Kielle's eyes glowed.

"Okay. Then we'll do it together. We'll do it the right way."

A ragged smile blossomed in Kielle's face.

"I'll distract him. You go behind pipe there. See it? Go over there and hide."

"What should I do?"

"Wait until I give you signal to come out. He'll be talking to me, won't look for you."

"And then?"

"Stab him as hard as you can in back. Okay?"

"Yes!" The little girl smiled, her eyes no longer fiery but cold as stone. "I'm Jubilee! No one can stop me!"

Brutus had his back to the interior of the slaughterhouse but he must have seen her reflection in a pane of cracked glass. He turned. "Whatta we got here?"

Melanie had slipped from the vat and circled back toward the killing room. Now she walked toward them, smiled at Shannon.

She looked at Handy and mimicked writing. He handed her a yellow pad and pen. She wrote, I don't want you to hurt her . She nodded toward Shannon.

"Hurt her? I'm giving… away. Understand?"